Lafayette Commons: “Floor Raising”

There’s going to be a “floor raising” for Lafayette Commons tomorrow at 6:00 PM in the new Southside Library. (6101 Johnston St—map) You’re Invited!

The event will be a floor raising in two senses:

  • first, it will introduce a project that hopes to raise the floor for the people of Lafayette: to make a common set of sophisticated tools available to everyone free of charge;
  • second, the meeting will be the first step in a community barn raising: it will gather users, programmers, admin types, and content producers in one place with to advance the project by laying down the floor….

A bit more:

Lafayette Commons is currently built on an Education Edition of Google Apps. Apps is a pretty shockingly sophisticated platform giving free access to an intergrated suite of email, calandering, word processing, spreadsheet, chat, web-building, and video apps. You get online storage to the tune of 8 gigs. With the Education Edition comes complete access to the APIs and the ability to alter them or bring in new modules or extensions. Each account comes with its own personalized start page giving quick access to your basic functions (like email, calendar, or docs). The start page also offers access to thousands of specialized “widgets” that winnow out the wealth of information availabel on the web; Lafayette Commons will host and encourage specialized Lafayette-centric widgets focusing on subjects ranging from crime and traffic to weather and local events.

A list of those interested in the “floor raising” will include:

  • Users of all stripes,
  • Nonprofits—cheap, sophisticated, cross platform tools should especially appeal to them
  • Programmers eager to learn something new and help out their community
  • Content providers who want their content in front of the public; from local government to the news, to events producers
  • Volunteers wanting to help bring folks up to speed or administer the site functions

In short, we’re looking for you.

(There’s an online invite too…if you’d like to get your very own personal invitation check the web page out and ask there. Similarly, if you can’t make the floor raising, but are interested check the invite and follow out the clicks for that option.)

23 thoughts on “Lafayette Commons: “Floor Raising””

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